


So Which Way to the Funfair?

by Janice_Lester



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Slash Goggles, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-21
Updated: 2010-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janice_Lester/pseuds/Janice_Lester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk and Spock are distracted from the unpromising maiden voyage of the <i>Enterprise</i> A by a wee spot of bother with the undead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Which Way to the Funfair?

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the [](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com/profile)[**trekreversebang**](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com/), where the art is the prompt! Artist: [](http://isca-lox.livejournal.com/profile)[**isca_lox**](http://isca-lox.livejournal.com/). Beta: [](http://nix-this.livejournal.com/profile)[**nix_this**](http://nix-this.livejournal.com/). Awesome cheerleader: [](http://ellethill.livejournal.com/profile)[ellethill](http://ellethill.livejournal.com/).

[ ](http://fav.me/d2q2s3w)

***

  
Hindsight, Jim Kirk reflected, once the initial shock of several dozen menacing figures bursting (well, lurching) onto the fairgrounds had passed, was not a pleasant thing. _Now_ , all those locked doors and blacked-out laboratory windows meant something. _Now_ it seemed suspicious the way Administrator Fulci had kept up such a relentless stream of babble that even Spock couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So too the meandering route the Administrator’s tour had taken, seeming _somehow_ to avoid all the research facility’s major thoroughfares. And the claim that all of Starfleet’s contribution to this planet’s brilliant, potentially famine-curing science project—all the biochemists and geneticists and even the lab-techs—were all far, far too busy for a quick word with a pair of visiting Starfleet captains, which should have been a rare and pleasant distraction from the pressures of life on an alien world. _Now_ , he wanted to smack himself in the head for missing the signs. But, with half a day to kill planetside while Scotty scrounged happily on the space station above for the parts he needed to get the brand new _Enterprise A_ ’s shakedown cruise, you know, actually _cruising_ rather than just _shaking_ … well, if Jim’d been in shore-leave mode, could anyone blame him?

“Fascinating,” Spock said, leaning forward to peer down at the spectacle below. A ferris wheel really did provide quite the view. Some other time, it would have been a delightful view of rolling hills and strangely undulating forests.

Right at this moment, however, it was an excellent view of utter mayhem.

Figures shambled haphazardly about, several in Starfleet uniforms, others in long, brightly-coloured lab coats. They looked drunk. Pale. And there was a definite unfriendly vibe to be felt. They milled about haphazardly, as if only just getting their bearings, at first a dozen or so, then more. Quite where they were coming from he couldn’t make out.

Unhappily, Jim set down their enormous bucket of popcorn (well, his, really; vegetarian-friendly or not, his chances of convincing Spock to try some had never been all that high) on the floor of their car and leaned forward for a better view. He did not have any kind of a good feeling about this.

“From their attire,” Spock observed, “the group most directly in our line of sight would appear to be comprised chiefly of laboratory personnel.”

Jim made an affirmative noise, not terribly interested in anyone’s sartorial choices just at the moment.

Their car had almost reached the top of the wheel when someone—a woman—gave a shrill scream, a primeval cry so full of undiluted pain and fear that it seemed to cut into Jim, rousing every protective instinct even as it chilled him through and through.

“There,” said Spock, quietly, pointing.

Below them, and off to the east, several of the lab-coated figures had a smaller person, in the multi-hued livery of the fair-ground employees, surrounded. Her second scream cut off abruptly as they closed their circle on her. Jim’s view was interrupted briefly as their car started its journey back down the wheel once more, but he was pretty clear on the part where they’d begun tearing the poor woman to pieces.

“They’ve gone mad…” he said uselessly. The Ellision sun continued to beat cheerfully down on them, and unfamiliar birds kept up their sweet song, but it all seemed so very wrong now.

“Perhaps some infection or psychic influence?” Spock suggested. Beneath his implacable surface calm ran a thread of disquiet.

Jim had to agree. The people of this world were strange, but not _that_ strange. The Federation would hardly want to have anything to do with them, much less expend precious time and resources helping them with their pet project, if they periodically enjoyed rampage and murder—not to mention that Commander Uhura would never have let them come here unarmed if there’d been so much of a whiff of such dangers in any of the official reports. So, some external factor must be at play here. But what kind, and were they at risk from that factor itself and not just from those already afflicted?

“If it’s infectious, is it likely to affect us on contact, on proximity? Airborne?”

“We have little data, beyond the fact that a substantial number of persons—I count thirty-nine at present—are affected simultaneously. This would tend to suggest either very rapid transmission and incubation or relatively long host survival.”

“And if it was psychic influence, would you feel it?”

“Not if it occurred at a sufficiently distant location and is not ongoing.” Spock turned his head briefly to look at Jim. “Of course, being Vulcan, it is conceivable that I might be immune to such an influence. Do you feel any ill effects?”

He was becoming hyperaware of his environment, preemptive sweat tingling as his body prepared for running, hiding, maybe fighting. His mind was his own though, for all that it was imagining increasingly horrible ends for them if they couldn’t get off this rock. _My kingdom,_ he thought with sudden hysteria, patting down his uniform, _for a goddamn phaser._ He felt Spock’s gaze on him and realised the Vulcan was still awaiting his response. “Ah, nothing unexpected, given the circumstances.”

Spock gave a minuscule nod and turned his attention back to the ground.

“So running from this lot might well be running towards whatever made them act this way.” _Wonderful._ “We have one more revolution before the ride stops, right?”

“That depends,” Spock replied rather grimly, “whether the attendant is still intact and at his post.”

“Ah.” Well, he couldn’t be worrying about that right now. First order of business had to be their own survival; a brace of experienced Starfleet captains they might be, but they wouldn’t be much use to anyone dead. Accordingly, he fumbled for his communicator and attempted, again, to raise Scotty up in orbit on Doric Station. Still just static. “Too much atmospheric interference.”

“The complex administrator undoubtedly has equipment capable of contacting the station.”

Jim tried again, adjusting the transmitter to local frequencies to see if he could raise Fulci or any of his people. No dice. He snapped the communicator shut and put it away again.

“There’s also our shuttlecraft,” he pointed out, because those _creatures_ had to have come from somewhere and right at this moment he wasn’t seeing many suspects besides the research complex itself. If the lab coats flapping about down there weren’t evidence enough, the Starfleet uniforms in the mêlée were a bit of a giveaway. The only Starfleet personnel on the planet—besides himself and Spock, of course—worked in the laboratories. All signs pointed to the complex as the source of this particular waking nightmare. So heading back there might not be the most brilliant of plans.

He frowned, thinking furiously. He always knew he was in trouble when Spock wasn’t reeling off the odds of anything. They were coming up to ground level once more, and the wheel wasn’t stopping. “Right,” Jim decided, “one more revolution, and then we’re going to have to jump. Make for the complex. If we get separated, and the complex is impassable, we’ll meet at the shuttle. You have your communicator?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Avoid any physical contact with those people if at all possible, Mister Spock. Good luck.”

A trio of men, faces oddly distorted and pale, clustered around the wheel’s machinery as they made their last revolution, clawing without apparent method at the controls. One was staring straight at him, expression oddly slack, arms raised as if in accusation. Jim had the distinct impression he’d just been claimed as someone’s lunch.

Jim stood. “Once more unto the breach, my friend, once more…” Spock gave him a long, significant look before he, too, rose to balance with enviable ease in the shifting, faintly rocking car.

They leapt together, from a height of perhaps two metres, hitting the grassy ground and rolling away from the wheel, in opposite directions. Even as Jim waited out the seconds until his body cancelled the dazed spinning of the universe around his head, an ominous shriek and grind of gears started up. He hauled himself upright and sprinted for the nearest cover, a shrub of some kind that looked as if a mutant banana tree had been crossed with a rose bush. A wrenching sound pierced the air. And then, ponderously, as he watched, the ferris wheel’s supports buckled and the whole thing toppled over sideways, making the ground jump beneath his feet.

Almost before the aftershocks of its collapse had died away, a dozen shambling humanoids had begun searching the empty cars, outstretched arms fumbling blindly.

Jim took a deep breath, then made an effort to relax taut muscles, think, and get his bearings. His cover seemed good, for now, but he’d have to make a dash across open country to get out of this mess.

***

**Earlier:**

“…systems both crucial and minor are a hodgepodge of old and new. My word, what a fine patchwork. Navigational sensors, for example, are essentially identical to those with which this vessel’s noble predecessor _Enterprise_ left Spacedock on her maiden voyage under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. Reliable. Familiar. And functioning perfectly. But the state of the art touch-screen control interface they connect to—” Jim glanced up at the sound of an automatic door failing and being forced. He swivelled his chair in time to see the turbolift unwillingly disgorge an unhappy-looking Montgomery Scott onto the bridge. “Computer, pause recording.”

Jim stood. He hated making that kind of log entry anyway, the kind that essentially said _Captain’s Log, stardate 8401.6. Nothing’s changed. We’re still stuck in the middle of nowhere with a beautiful ship that doesn’t go. I can only hope the Klingons don’t decide today’s the day to give up on the peace talks and take out a sitting Starfleet duck…_ He crossed the bridge to give his chief engineer a reassuring pat on the arm.

“Any progress on our baby’s teething troubles, Mister Scott?”

Scotty sighed dramatically. “It’s no good. We need parts, and I just haven’t got ‘em. Two bloody great cargo containers of spares in the hold, and they’re all for the wrong class of starship, can ye believe it?”

“I believe it,”Jim replied wryly, not entirely decided on the laughing/groaning/hair-tearing dilemma.

“And, as we’ve only a skeleton crew aboard, I don’t have anything like the manpower I’d need to start buildin’ things from scratch,” he complained, sighing hugely. “Even if we _had_ all the raw materials. Which, of course, we don’t.” He muttered something about Starfleet and welding torches that Jim didn’t quite catch. It didn’t sound complimentary. “Sir,” he added, as an afterthought.

“Please don’t tell me we need to call for a _tow_. I think we would all prefer to avoid that particular indignity, Mister Scott.”

Scotty appeared simultaneously to bristle and buck up. “Well, sir, there is a minor outpost in the next system over. Doric Station. Should be able to offer us bits and bobs enough to get the impulse engines firing properly again at least. Would you be willin’ to authorise a wee trip in a shuttlecraft?”

Jim smiled, rubbing a thigh still protesting after too many hours spent wedged beneath bridge consoles in various states of disassembly. “I’ll do you one better, my good man! I’ll take you there myself.” A brief respite from the frustrations of an uncooperative ship would do them both good, put them in a better mood for leading the crew. So he leaned over the captain’s chair, reaching for the comm switch to contact the duty officer on the hangar deck (Bennet, probably, at this hour. Good man. Liked karaoke and spiced beef). Only the chair did not cooperate. It creaked alarmingly for a second or two before finally giving up the ghost and falling over backwards with a horrible screech as bolts were ripped out of the deck. Scotty was still wincing when Jim caught his balance.

***

Captain James T. Kirk liked piloting shuttles. It wasn’t a secret. Ask anyone. Sprawled back in the main chair, gazing out the huge front viewport or tiny forward view screen, depending on shuttle class, with Spock at his side monitoring sensors and plotting those deviously exacting courses of his (which Jim liked to ignore just to mess with him. And because it was more fun to steer his own damn horse), he felt as if the whole universe was opening up to him in a more intimate, personal way than even the _Enterprise_ allowed. Space. Planets, stars, galaxies. All waiting out there to be seen, to be experienced.

“Captain,” Spock said, in those familiar, reassuring, measured tones, “sensors detect a minor electromagnetic anomaly ahead. Please trim heading by—”

Jim’s hands were already playing over the controls. “Thank you, Mister Spock, I’m on it.”

Behind them, in the passenger area, Montgomery Scott could be heard to snore. Jim’s lips twitched, but he kept quiet. God knew the man needed some _rest_ , he was too damn stubborn to take any downtime while his beloved engines were virtually stalled.

“Captain,” Spock said, his body relaxing in its own subtle way. “You seem less displeased with the current state of affairs than I would have predicted.”

“Hmm? With the ship being out of action, you mean?” He turned slightly in the pilot’s chair. His friend was watching him, gaze steady, expression serene. “She’s fresh off the production line, Spock. There are bound to be mechanical issues we need to resolve. That’s what a shakedown cruise is _for_. Sure, it can be frustrating. But we have a _ship_ again, that’s the main thing. Plus, she’s a beauty. And I’ve never broken in a brand new starship before. It’ll be worth it.”

“Indeed,” Spock said, but for some reason he sounded suddenly a trifle distant.

And it hit Jim, then, that Spock actually hadn’t been his first officer, officially, in a very long time. He’d certainly stepped in and filled the role with aplomb when required, but it hadn’t been as simple as Captain Kirk and his First Officer Spock since long, long before Spock died. And Spock was not—or was not _yet_ —the man he’d been before he’d died. The memories seemed to be there, mostly, but they weren’t all integrated as they had been. This was not quite the same old Spock. So, in a way, this new mission was less like returning to their roots and more like starting over, only this time they were friends first and fellow officers second.

They didn’t talk much after that until Scotty snored himself awake just as Doric Station came into visual range, and then the talking was very much Scotty’s doing, responses not exactly requisite.

***

Within minutes of a smooth (yup, piloting chops: still got ‘em) landing at the station, Scotty was led off into the bowels of the engineering section, already deep in conversation with a couple of station snipes about what the _Enterprise_ needed. Never mind that these women weren’t human, weren’t Starfleet, didn’t even hail from a Federation world, an engineer was an engineer and Scotty, apparently, felt an instant kinship with them.

Jim was left with the distinct impression that neither his services nor Spock’s were required.

“What do you say we head down to the planet, stretch our land legs a little?”

Spock’s left eyebrow rose. “As you are no doubt aware, Captain, beaming through this planet’s atmosphere is inadvisable. We would have to take the shuttlecraft. To do so for the sake of a few hours’ relaxation planetside would seem a most illogical use of resources.”

Jim knew a ‘no’ when he heard one. That hadn’t been a ‘no’. He grinned. “I’ll go file a flight plan, then.”

***

There was a _fairground_ , the local administrator said, as they passed a door labelled “PCR: No admittance” and another labelled “Wild type storage: No admittance”, which was closely followed by one labelled simply “DANGER: Keep out!”. Jim had half a mind to go check it out, since for one thing they were clearly taking up a busy man’s time, and for, another, this was supposed to be a free afternoon’s entertainment. And what could be more entertaining than, say, talking Spock into riding on a carousel (or local equivalent thereof) with him?

One definitely got the impression that big things were happening here, Jim thought as they ended up back where they’d started, in the administration wing of the complex. Which was all to the good. The new crop varieties being developed here held the promise of famine-proofing the known galaxy, and Jim Kirk, who’d seen five too many populations on the brink of disaster after unexpected failure of the main food crop, was behind that initiative one hundred percent. He didn’t really need to understand the first thing about the techniques being deployed or the nomenclature being coined hereabouts to support the Ellisions’ efforts. He only hoped they’d do something about the problem of tribbles destroying food crops while they were at it.

“So which way to the funfair?” he asked, grinning as he shook Administrator Fulci’s hand.

***

**Later:**

Jim broke cover when he heard the heavy breathing and arrhythmic, stumbling footsteps coming. His next, best hiding place was an open-fronted tent housing some sort of game of chance, and he sprinted for it, eye on his destination and prepared to barrel right through anyone (or any _thing_ ) who got in his way. He easily outpaced whoever had been skulking around the banana-rose-bush. Whatever had happened to these people, whatever now compelled them to give chase, it wasn’t doing them any favours as far as speed or grace were concerned. His peripheral vision caught two pursuers, but they were far enough away that he had time to duck into the shadows of the tent and look around.

Jim helped himself to a bat from the local version of a Whack-A-Mole game and hefted it experimentally. Wooden, but sturdy. It would do. He slung it over his shoulder and darted back out into the chaos.

He made it almost to the fairground fence before anyone got close. But sooner or later, he supposed, a man’s luck had to give out.

There were two of them: large, drooling, with dirty-looking talons extended despite the fact that at least one—the one whose skin appeared to be peeling from his cheeks, the one in the uniform of a Starfleet lieutenant, life sciences division—looked to be human and should therefore not have been in possession of any kind of talons. But talons it had. Or seriously grubby fingernails, but he wasn’t keen to check.

“Stay back,” he warned, quite confident it was futile. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Grr…! Arrrrgh,” said the man on the left. His companion was even less intelligible.

Life-Sciences swiped at him. Jim leapt back, nearly tripped over some obstacle in the choppy grass.

The pair advanced, the reek of them bringing Jim back for an awful moment to the worst day of his childhood. He knew the stink of human flesh decaying in the sun. He swung the bat wildly, hoping to scare them. They were unmoved. They shambled closer, and beyond them a third limping, lifeless-looking person approached. This one, a woman, wore a standard duty uniform, the jacket flap open and blood-spattered like a bib at a cannibal buffet. A thick clump of long black hair hung from her open mouth, threaded through her teeth like macabre dental floss. She herself was a redhead.

Nausea and adrenaline hit Jim hard at the same moment, and the instant Tweedledum and Tweedledee twitched for him he struck, one-two, in the ribs and across the shoulders. They staggered but didn’t stop. Jim hit harder the second time, the impact shocking up his arms. Flesh and bone split beneath wood, enough to stop a Klingon mid-charge. No reaction. No obvious signs of pain. Even when he’d knocked all three into the dirt they still showed every sign of getting up again, and _soon_. Jim ran for the low boundary fence, tossed the bat over and scurried up after it.

On the other side, he set himself a steady, sustainable jog. Making the walk from the complex to the fairgrounds with Spock barely two hours ago had taken almost an hour. He needed to do better.

***

**Earlier**

“I am unfamiliar with this human custom,” Spock said. “Is it a practice rooted in religious tradition?”

“Now I _know_ you’re teasing me.”

How Spock could raise an eyebrow quite that high without straining something, Jim didn’t know. “Teasing: combing or otherwise dividing a tangled fibrous mass into separate strands.”

“Nope. Try again.”

“To raise a nap.”

“Keep going. There are only so many definitions in the dictionary. Besides, we have all afternoon.”

“To brush hair in defiance of its natural inclination in order to create a bulkier appearance.”

Jim snorted and went with the sudden urge to pick one of those butter-cup-like flowers on the side of the path and tuck it behind Spock’s ear. Where it remained for all of about five steps, before slipping free to flutter back to earth. Spock raised the other eyebrow, then cleared his throat. Loudly.

“To apply deliberate sexual temptation without any intention of satisfying any desire thus elicited.”

Jim faltered, feet seeming to have given up on walking while his body took Spock’s words one way and his brain tried to parse them out every _other_ possible way just in case. It took him several deep breaths to get going again, blasé smile pasted carefully in place. “If that’s what you’re doing, Mister Spock, I should warn you that my people have a saying : turnabout is fair play.” He winked. Spock’s face drained of expression so completely that it was suddenly difficult to believe it had _ever_ displayed any kind of expression at all. “But that wasn’t the sense I meant, and you know it.”

Spock nodded, cleared his throat again, turned his attention back to the path and walked on. “In that case,” he said, “perhaps I was teasing you. My re-education has included some information on state fairs, travelling shows, circuses and the like. I confess that I had not, however, conceived of a visit to such an institution as a likely activity for two middle-aged friends from different planets to undertake together. Is this not usually the realm of children?”

“Ah, Spock, but what are children? I think the day a man’s got nothing childish left in him, he’s dead inside.”

“Thank you, Captain. That may explain a good deal.”

Jim cheerfully ignored the implied insult. “Jim. Shore-leave, Spock. It's _Jim._ ”

“Our designated shore-leave period is not for another—”

“We’re off duty, more or less, away from the ship, just the two of us, with no responsibilities until it’s time to get back in the shuttle and go pick up Scotty. Think of it as shore-leave. Relax. And call me Jim.”

Spock was quiet after that until they reached the fairgrounds and promptly got into an argument about the permissibility of cotton candy in a Vulcan diet and whether or not Doctor McCoy would approve of Jim consuming so many calories with so little associated nutritive value. Jim surrendered gracefully on the condition that Spock joined him for a ride on the carousel. There was just something about a man on a horse, even if that horse was a six-legged pink thing with a sparkly mane and a hide made of soft-touch durable polymer, that appealed to him. Jim laughed and chased Spock endlessly around in perfect, computer-controlled circles. It was _fun_.

***

**Later:**

Jim’s way was blocked twice by… people… though these looked less like people than the ones at the fairground had. More like corpses, really. As much as Spock would probably lecture him about IDIC, the sight of these shambling figures with their decaying flesh and clouded eyes made him queasy. Despite his best efforts, the phrase “Zombie Apocalypse” kept running through his mind.

But, eventually, clutching the stitch in his side with one hand and the bloody wooden bat in the other, Jim made it to the sprawling lawns of the research complex. The buildings looked deserted, but Jim wasn’t prepared to trust much to appearances. He approached cautiously, weapon at the ready.

By the time he was halfway up the path to Reception, he could make out that the automatic doors hung ominously open, that several extremely resilient plexiglass windows were smashed, and that the power appeared to be off. As he drew closer…

Well, on the plus side, the place wasn’t on fire. But that, to judge from the sharp, chemical scent on the air, was only because the automatic fire suppression systems had activated while there was still power to operate them. He stood on the threshold, peered into the gloom, ran through a quick tactical analysis taking into account the relatively unfamiliar terrain, darkness, lack of sophisticated weaponry, his current state of fatigue, weighed against the obvious truth that these creatures, whatever they were, sure made a lot of noise when they moved about, and—

Jim started violently as his communicator beeped. Automatically, he slipped into a defensible position against a wall and away from windows before he answered. “What is it, Spock?”

“Captain.” Such a lot of emotion squeezed into one little word from a supposedly emotionless man.

“I’m fine, Spock. How are you?”

“My condition is acceptable. I have restored partial power in the main genomics laboratory and am presently reviewing experimental notes. Equipment here permits some monitoring of life-signs in the vicinity—”

“They are alive, then, these things?” _And here I thought I was trapped in one of those old-time zombie films my grandfather used to watch._

The pause that followed suggested great feats of eyebrow gymnastics. “They are mobile and aware of their environment. They are not mechanical. Ergo, they are alive, in some form.”

“Great, Spock, that’s great.” Some day he’d learn not to leave himself open for lectures. “You were saying?”

“I recommend you travel around the building to enter via one of the doors on the western side. This will minimise your danger.”

“All right. I’m on my way.” He took a deep breath.

“Captain,” Spock said, just as he was closing the communicator. “Take care.”

_Don’t I always?_

He squared his shoulders and mentally prepared himself to get in there, where Spock was waiting for him.

_All right. Let’s do this._

***

“If you will permit me to speculate based on extremely limited information,” Spock began, even as he was barricading the swinging lab doors behind Jim with a table leg through both handles, “I believe I may offer a theory as to what has transpired here.”

“I’m all ears.”

Spock directed Jim to don gloves from the dispenser. It seemed like a good precaution.

“As you know, the present goal of this institution is to modify one or more of the local grain species—which are already unusually complete sources of required nutrients for most known humanoid species—in order to improve yield and render the plants sufficiently hardy to grow in a variety of planetary environments.”

Jim made an interested noise to show he was listening and tried not to think of Tarsus.

“It would appear that a fungus which commonly grows on the seed hulls was inadvertently cultured and enhanced along with the grain. This fungus contained a prion exceedingly inimical to humanoid life.”

“Ah. And someone was accidentally exposed?”

Spock waved a padd. “A number of someones, to judge by the sharp decline in employee sign-ins which began approximately one week ago.”

Jim blinked. Multiple accidental exposures? How the hell did they manage that? “But even if they weren’t using sterilisation fields, don’t standard laboratory surface disinfecting liquids denature proteins?”

“The Ellisions would appear to have been somewhat lax in their application of such agents, and to have relied heavily upon cheaper anti-microbial sprays which—because they are only 99.9% effective even when used correctly—breed resistance and are largely responsible for the rising number of deaths from antibiotic resistant strains of previously treatable infections. Their use in a laboratory environment is unacceptable. I have demoted staff for less egregious violations of accepted safe practice. In any case, the grain experiments would appear to have reproduced this prion in quantity, and the widespread failures of safe laboratory practice permitted multiple workers to become infected.”

“At which point, of course, they _filed a goddamn incident report and requested assistance._ ”

Spock raised an eyebrow at the sarcasm. “They did not.” He selected another padd, handed it over. It showed a map of the complex, various dots blinking to indicate lifeforms. Two, bright blue-white, located in one of the larger laboratories, obviously represented himself and Spock. The others, a much less healthy-looking hue, were mainly congregated on the lowest level. “They incarcerated the infected personnel in the basement and engaged in the illogical practice of ‘hoping the problem would go way’. As you can see, it has done no such thing.”

As Jim watched, one of the dots began moving this way. “Right. Well, Spock, it doesn’t sound like there’s much we can do for them except to get what data and samples we can out of here. Perhaps Bones can manage a medical miracle.”

Spock’s expression suggested he found that rather unlikely. But he got to work, rapidly stacking the padds and log books he needed before crossing the lab to examine the contents of the cold storage unit. Soon enough, they had some unknown lab worker’s satchel packed, and the slight problem that the padd hooked up to life-sign detection was showing unfriendlies outside the door and both major windows.

“Now we just have to get back to the shuttle without being torn to pieces. Suggestions?”

“This lab was not my first port of call.” Spock opened a cupboard door and retrieved a machete. “The roof features expansive greenhouses in which experimental crops are grown. One such crop is very like your Earth sugar cane, and requires this kind of equipment for efficient manual harvesting.” He waved the weapon, and the blade glinted pink in the sunlight streaming in from the nearest window. “This proved significantly more useful than a nerve pinch at subduing our present foes.”

Jim accepted the offered blade. “Now you’re talk—”

The lab’s double doors began to rattle. Someone was trying to get in. Jim shouldered the bag full of research materials, and took a deep, bracing breath. Now was not the time to be worrying whether the disease could be transmitted through blood, right? “What are you going—”

The huge main window shattered beneath the weight of a sallow, groaning creature who was already dragging himself up from the mess of broken plexiglass and blood he’d made. Several pale, grotesquely veined hands were already scrabbling at the window frame, their owners starting to climb head first into the lab.

“Cover me,” Spock said, from nearby and low down, as if he’d crawled under the nearest table.

Jim stepped forward, machete raised, bat dangling from his other hand, ignoring the alarming sounds behind them as disease-crazed people in who-knew-what numbers attempted to force the lab doors.

It took less force than it should have to behead the first invader. Perhaps whatever had caused the washed out, peeling appearance of the skin had also weakened flesh and bone somewhat. Jim wasn’t complaining, even if the jolt of his machete tip striking the tile floor after the infected Ellision’s head was removed really hurt his shoulder. Blood and pus coated the floor in the wake of the still-rolling head. He half expected the body to keep on coming anyway, but, no, both pieces lay still and quiet.

Jim straightened, lip curling in disgust, and went to meet his next two visitors.

Fortunately, they had little sense of teamwork beyond the instinct to cluster, or he’d have had a job taking them both out. But he hacked at one’s neck, ducked the other’s vicious grab for him, and came up swinging with the bat even as the first one fell. It was easier to relieve them of their heads once they were both down.

He ventured over to the window, heart in his throat, some pessimistic part of him expecting to see a vast army of the things stretching out across the lawn and the sloping meadows beyond. But there were only a few, all trying to get in the window at once. Jim whacked each head as it popped up over the sill or peered around the frame, all too aware now that the thumping sounds of more monsters bouncing off the doors had given way to the sounds of splintering timber as those doors gave.

Even in the thick of battle, he relaxed a bit when Spock returned to stand back to back with him. He cut off a head, leaving a gouge in the window frame and doing his blade an injury. Only a couple more left, at least as far he could see without leaning out the window and making himself one hell of a target.

“What kept you?”

“Preparations. I estimate that the lab doors will give in approximately—”

_Crash._

Jim heard footsteps. A lot of footsteps. And unintelligible grumbling and groaning. He didn’t dare look.

“When the opportunity presents,” Spock said, his calm most definitely in the _reassuring_ rather than the _irritating_ category right now, “please exit via the window.” And he started doing something, because Jim heard the sounds of liquid spraying and smelled something strong, like rubbing alcohol or vodka. Jim hacked through his remaining visible opponents, and then there was nothing for it. He tossed the machete and the satchel out as gently as possible, then took what little run-up he had and flung himself out the window, holding himself and the bat loosely in an attempt to stay armed but avoid injury.

The fruity smell of the weird alien grass was pleasant after the stench of the laboratory under siege.

There were no more of their creepy half-dead friends in view out here, so Jim got up and strode over to retrieve his stuff before returning to peer in the window in case Spock needed help. He blinked to bring the backlit scene into focus. Spock stood facing a semi-circle of goons. As Jim watched, he flung some kind of bottle-and-hose apparatus at the nearest, who staggered back. He pulled something from his pocket, there was a spark and a flick of his wrist—

All Spock’s attackers went up in flame. Spock turned, pelted for the window as Jim hurriedly got out of the way, and dived out to roll several times on the lawn before sitting up to squint, slightly dazed, at Jim.

“I suggest we make haste for the shuttle now, Captain,” he said.

Jim grinned and helped him up. “Every now and then, Mister Spock, you remind me why it’s a very bad idea to piss off a Vulcan.”

Their second companionable walk of the day differed somewhat from the first. There were no buttercups and no idle chitchat (not that Spock could ever be accused of so heinous a crime as chitchat), just two weary old captains with new bruises walking together in the sunshine, occasionally stopping for a bit of unavoidable mortal combat. The adrenaline gradually worked its way out of Jim's system until he was achy and yawning and very much in favour of a hot bath followed by cool sheets.

When they finally reached the shuttlecraft _Copernicus_ , Jim resisted the urge to kiss its stalwart silver bulkheads in relief. But only because Spock would have hectored him about it. So he just went aboard, and waited for the hatch to seal behind them, and let out a long, shuddering breath.

Jim did not find the prospect of piloting their shuttle back up to the station terribly exciting, so he let Spock do it. Besides, he had a _very_ pointed report to write for his former colleagues in the admiralty about the whole situation on Ellis. And Bones would probably appreciate the heads-up on the possibility that he was about to be asked to find a cure for or vaccine against a brand new prion disease.

***

“Well,” Jim said, and gave up pacing the Doric Station decontamination/quarantine suite in favour of plopping down on the bench beside Spock, “that was fun.”

Spock didn’t lower his hands from their meditative pose, but he did open his eyes. Actually, he looked about _this far_ from rolling them.

Jim shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, okay, not the most relaxing afternoon excursion ever. But we might’ve helped save most of a planetary population from a horrible disease. And there was a ferris wheel. And I got a chance to spend some time with you. Just you. I liked that part.”

The long fingers unfolded, the hands dropped. “That part was… agreeable.”

Jim smiled.

“Should you still wish us to spend our upcoming shore-leave together—”

“Of course I do!”

“—you will permit me to select our destination.”

He leaned close enough to bump Spock’s shoulder with his own. “Somewhere without rampaging zombie hordes, huh?”

“Indeed.”

“Somewhere without hordes of any kind, even.”

“Quite. Shore-leave should be a time of tranquil rest, free from significant danger.”

“You have anywhere in mind?”

“Earth’s North American continent. Specifically, the area known as Yosemite National Park. There are numerous items of botanical and aesthetic interest, as well as varied opportunities for leisurely physical recreation—hiking, fishing, and so forth—should your illogical preference for exertion over actual rest persist.”

Jim couldn’t keep his grin under control any more. Spock had clearly given serious thought to making him _happy_. And keeping him safe. “Trying to keep me out of trouble, Spock? Even in paradise, I’m sure there’s _some_ kind of mischief with my name on it.”

Spock frowned, ever so slightly. “Indeed.” He thought a moment, then relaxed and folded his hands into their meditative gesture once more. “Perhaps we had better invite the good doctor along, just in case.” And he closed his eyes and returned to serene half-Vulcan statue mode.

It might have smarted that their vacation for two had just become a vacation for three. But Jim was far too busy being entertained by visions of what he could get up to in Yosemite. Taking Spock camping. Long friendly debates over the ethics of fishing. Fireside stories about their different childhoods in Riverside and Shi’Kahr. Reminiscences of first assignments, first promotions, first dates. And who said having Bones along meant he’d have less time to spend with Spock?

And Yosemite boasted some spectacular views from some _fantastic_ rocks…  


***END***

  



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